New Google hire takes gloves off in Apple rivalry
2:43p ET March 15, 2010 (MarketWatch)
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - While Google Inc.'s budding rivalry with Apple Inc. has largely been a tight-lipped affair managed through legal and regulatory channels, one of the Internet giant's newest hires is not being shy about airing grievances.
Tim Bray, a well-known software developer employed until recently at Sun Microsystems Inc., wrote on his personal Web site Monday that he has joined Mountain View, Calif.-based Google , while decrying Apple's "sterile" vision of the mobile phone software market.
"It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers," Bray wrote of Apple's strategy for the popular iPhone. "I hate it."
Google has long been an important strategic partner for Apple , as a supplier of search, mapping and other services for the iPhone and other Apple products. The two companies once shared a board member in Arthur Levinson, and Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt also sat on Apple's board until stepping down in August.
However, Google's own ambitions for the mobile phone market have caused the relationship to sour.
Apple recently filed a patent lawsuit against HTC Corp. , a prominent maker of phones that support Google's Android mobile software. The lawsuit is widely seen as an indirect attack on Google's business model, which relies on the use of open-source software to develop a variety of devices running Android - some of which resemble the iPhone in design and functionality.
In addition, Google and Apple have been at odds over the iPhone's exclusion of the Google Voice application - prompting an inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission.
"Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other," Bray wrote. "I think they're wrong and see this job as a chance to help prove it."
Bray wrote that Apple is now selling roughly 90,000 iPhones per day, while roughly 60,000 Android-based phones are being sold daily, making it a "horse race."
Bray's former employer, Sun, was acquired by Oracle Corp. earlier this year in a $7.4 billion merger. His official title at Google is "Developer Advocate," with a focus on Android, he wrote.
Bray noted that he doesn't intend for Google to vet anything on his blog before it publishes. However, he also wrote that Google saw an advanced draft of his post about Apple and the iPhone, "but didn't suggest any changes."
Google at "cold war" with the world.
